"Perhaps one should emphasize here that he (V.S. Naipaul) has gone out of his way, from time to time and far beyond the call of duty, to burnish his reputation as a cantankerous curmudgeon - truly the Evelyn Waugh of our age, right down to his squirearchal residence in the west of England - or even as a bigoted old barroom kvetch. Not long ago Naipaul anathematized Tony Blair as a 'pirate' at the head of 'a socialist revolution' ..." Geoffrey Wheatcroft, A Terrifying Honesty, The Atlantic Monthly (Boston), Feb 2002.